Beatles 1964 telecast a life-changer for some Central Mass. musicians

Fifty years ago today, the Beatles made their first U.S. television appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Fifty years later, we're still talking about it.

Or should I say, we still love the Beatles. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Not only did a staggering 73 million people watch the Fab Four that night, a countless number of baby boomers were inspired to pick up guitars and form bands.

And some of them were lucky enough to make careers out of it.

Mark Marquis of Leominster remembers Sunday, Feb. 9, 1964. like it was yesterday. He was 10 years old and was looking forward to watching "Scarecrow" on "The Wonderful World of Disney," as he and his friends had the previous Sundays.

"That morning I said to my friend, 'Jimmy, are we going to watch "Scarecrow" tonight.' And his father said, 'Well, if you're going to watch something, you're not going to watch it here because we're watching the Beatles.' I never heard of the Beatles…And, I said, 'The Beatles? What's the Beatles?' And, I remember his words, he said, 'They're this new singing group from the United Kingdom. They are supposed to be quite the thing,'" Marquis recalled.

That night, Marquis and his friends were getting ready to watch "Scarecrow" but changed the channel to check out the Beatles. "Scarecrow" was forgotten.

"It was electrifying. I remember immediately liking them," Marquis said of the Beatles performance on the show. "For me, that's when things changed. From that moment, that's when it happened."

Marquis said the Beatles inspired him to take up the guitar. As a result, he joined his "first real band" when he was 12. He's been playing music ever since.

The Beatles taught a generation of people how to play as a band, he said.

"If you listened to the records at that time, the Beatles to me, they sounded like they played their instruments better than most of the groups," Marquis said. "Even on 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' the Beatles played as a band …They all had a place in their music. It was a group effort and that's why they sounded good."

Before Cliff Goodwin became an original member of local rock legends Albatross, The American Standard Band, The Joe Cocker Band, Robert Palmer's band and the Mohegan Sun All-Stars, he was just another American kid whose life changed on Feb. 9, 1964.

"Everybody wanted to be Paul because he was the most animated and the cutest, but everybody thought I should be George, and I don't know why," Goodwin recalled. "When I was old enough to realize what a gold record was, I wanted a gold and platinum record on the Capitol label because of the Beatles. And, I eventually got it because Joe (Cocker) is on the Capitol label."

"It was life-changing but, at the time, you didn't know it," the Worcester musician said. "It wasn't I wanted to do that because of the screaming girls. It was almost like being part of a gang that had a mission that wasn't overtly dangerous … Keep in mind, I'm 10 and a half years old at the time."

Although he already owned "Meet the Beatles" before the telecast, Goodwin didn't start taking guitar lessons until after the fateful night.

"Nick Lowe said, and it's valid when you think about it, that after the Beatles, everybody thought they could play their own instruments and not everybody could. After the Beatles, everybody thought they could write their own songs and not everybody could," Goodwin said. "The Beatles' legacy is not so much their body of work. It's the fire they lit. The spark created heat and that heat created millions of parts."

Mitch Chakour — who plays with Goodwin in the Mohegan Sun All-Stars and has also played with Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, the J. Geils Band and Chuck Berry — learned to love Beethoven at an early age. Then he got into the Beatles.

"My dad was a minister at a church. We had church Sunday evenings, so I missed the first Beatles show," the Auburn native recalled. "The next day in school, the kids were all going crazy. I was in the fourth grade. I had to find out what this was. So I conspired the entire end of the week to be sick and stay home to watch the Beatles on the next "Ed Sullivan Show" on Sunday (Feb. 16, 1964)."

Although he was a week late, Chakour finally saw the Beatles and, he said, "the experience changed my life forever."

Dennis Cummins remembers that all the kids in his Shrewsbury neighborhood were excited about the Beatles appearance.

"I know my brothers were in the room, and I think my father was probably there too, shaking his head. He quickly warmed up to them. I was surprised by that. And, my mother, she was afraid to admit that she liked them in front of my father," Cummins recalled. "One of the biggest things that was going through my head was here's a bunch a kids who didn't come from rich families and they were going to make it big. And everybody was screaming and loving what they were doing. It was like, 'I want to do that.' And, of course, it took me 50 years or so to do it, but I'm doing it now."

For the last seven years, Cummins has been playing rhythm guitar, keyboards and supplying vocals for the Fab Four tribute band, Beatles For Sale.

Cummins, who quickly bought a cheap acoustic guitar after the Beatles' telecast, had an opportunity to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium but his father wouldn't let him because he was only 12 years old.

"Seeing that first show, I haven't veered off the Beatles path in 50 years. That's all I listen to. That's all I play. And I don't care for much else," Cummins said.

Wayne Beckner, who played in a number of successful garage-bands, including the Tyes, the Del-Mars and Michael & the Messengers (which had the hit "Romeo & Juliet"), and his younger brother Paul were already playing the guitar before the Beatles first conquered our shores. But Wayne liked playing folk music and Paul liked playing jazz. Wayne Beckner credits the Beatles for bringing the brothers together musically.

"When the Beatles come along, right away, my brother and I both latched onto them," Wayne said. "I can't remember if was before the show or after the show, but my brother said, 'Wayne, we have to start a band.'… And we did."

Wayne Beckner said what first impressed him about the Beatles was how they were in command of their respective instruments.

"Even all the bands that were pretty popular during the time of the Beatles, when you heard them live on TV, they didn't sound anything like their records, whereas the Beatles sounded exactly like their records live, because they were accomplished," Wayne explained. "The Beatles could play all styles. The Stones were stuck in whatever they can do. But the Beatles could do something like the Stones and do other things. They could do harmony parts that could blow the Beach Boys away, so beautiful."

Beckner, who saw the Beatles at Suffolk Down (in the seventh row, no less) and Shea Stadium, said they were loud and tight live.

"Although the Beatles used the same stage and the same monitor speakers all around everyone else used, they were twice as loud as anyone who got on that stage," Beckner recalled. "When a band gets together and plays for a long time in clubs, you can actually turn your volume down and still be louder than other bands because you're so dynamic. You're so powerful. It cuts through everything, and that's what the Beatles had. They were way solid."

"When the Beatles came out, that's what we wanted to do, especially when you see the girls on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' screaming," Jimmy D'Angelo said. "You know, that looks like a pretty good route to take. That was the beginning of it all."

Today, Joe D'Angelo is the guitar consultant for the Worcester Fine Arts–Music Magnet Program at Burncoat middle and high schools, and Jimmy D'Angelo still rocks out with his band Deep Six. Before the Beatles, however, all the D'Angelo brothers cared about was playing baseball.

"I was very interested in baseball. I played baseball in grammar school and little league and Babe Ruth," Jimmy D'Angelo recalled. "I always wanted to be Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris or Ted Williams. They were all my idols. And the Beatles erased that."

Joe had already been taking guitar lessons "under duress," but his attitude changed after the show.

"When I finally saw the Beatles, I saw what the guitar could be, and it changed everything," he said. I started playing guitar very seriously, very fanatically, to the point that it worried my mother."

The Beatles gave the D'Angelo brothers the incentive to start a band and play the guitar seriously. One of the bands were The Joneses, which, in the '70s, had a friendly rivalry with Aerosmith, as they duked it out for being the biggest rock band in the Bay State.

"The Beatles changed a lot of kids' lives," Jimmy D'Angelo added. "And the music was great. The music was nice enough that even the parents liked the Beatles."